[Kombisaurus]

I was browsing through This Article about Bob Martin a few weeks ago and it suddenly occurred to me that sports photography really has nothing to do with sport. The best sports photographs are good not because of the sport but because of the photograph. Often they don't even capture an exciting or important moment, they simply capture the essence of being caught up in the event.
It slowly dawned on me that its OK for sports photography to be as creative and varied as any other form of photography - its just that somehow I had been brainwashed along the way into thinking a good sports photo should look like the boring repetitive stereotype action photos that fill the back pages our newspapers every day.

Armed with this idea, I set myself new objectives for this championships.
As well as capturing the more traditional action shots I've posted here, and some portraits I posted here, I wanted to forget it was a sporting event and just approach it as I would a landscape, still life, portrait or any other regular type of shooting I'd do. I wanted to use the photos to say something... but something other than simply "this is a game of water polo". I wanted to try to tell a story within a story, or perhaps just use the shapes, tones, and relationships I found to make an image that has a more abstract appeal. I basically just wanted to try out new stuff and show things in a slightly different way.

And here's some of the stuff I ended up with:


1. South Africa's Sarah Harris takes to the pool in the women's game against England (it looks like the coach just pushed her in! )


2. Legs and Angles - Sarah Harris again just a fraction of a second after shot #1, as she enters the water.


3. England's Larissa Davies watches the ball go by in the women's heat against South Africa.


4. The Australian men's team enter the pool together at the start of the heat against South Africa. I chose a 1/30th second shutter speed and managed to pan successfully with Jamie Beadsworth's head (#12).


5. The hand of Dominique Perreault from Canada on the ball during the women's heat against Australia.


6. The New Zealand women's coach offers some advice to the referee during the heat against the Australians.


7. The Canadian and Australian teams shake hands at the end of the men's Gold Medal final.

[sg]

So very impressive Kombi, capturing "moments". I think you acheived what you set out to do, in my eyes anyways

[noisynoodle]

Fantastic shots, as ever, Kombi If I had to choose 3 favourites they'd be the Australian team entering the water (No 4), the NZ coach offering advice (No 6) and the teams shaking hands (No 7). For me, all three of these express something more about the event and make me feel involved (even though I'm not much one for sports of any kind). Far better than typical sports shots which seem only to report on the event rather than telling the story of it as these do.

Jan

[shuttertalk]

I think that's a very astute observation, Adrian. Come to think of it, all the cool sports shots I see in the newspapers are usually the close-up ones that capture a very unique expression or moment. You rarely see any zoomed out pictures with a field full of players or that sort of thing - probably because (1) anyone with a point and shoot could snap that, and (2) people want to see details.

Now, on to your pics, these are my favs:

#6 - dunno why, but I love this one - the referee has a wonderfully comical look on his face

#7 - this really conveys the spirit and meaning of sportsmanship and I love the way you've focussed on the on the handshake. Awesome!

[byrt_001]

hi

some really great work....number 4 and 7 really stand out
really diferent in diferent ways

christian

[Schellamo]

Wow, I must say, I love these best out of the shots you've posted so far!!
Great work. I particularly like no 4 keep 'em coming!

[Russt]

awesome stuff.............#4 and #7 these take the cake.

the sprit in #7 is just great!!!!!!!!

[wulinka]

I love these. the last one in particular.
you are doing great at spotting and capturing those decisive moments, and I envy you for that!!

Hope you don't mind me asking, but is the blur in #7 entirely "natural"? it doesn't intuitively entirely seem to me like the middle, right's guy is not in the same plane as the a hands and the other guys chest, but I could be wrong.

I think #6 is my favorite in terms of composition and lightning, and maybe alltogether, but I also love #6, it's one of those "I can't believe you managed to shoot this, and not just any way".

Great. uli

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks folks.. I really appreciate these comments.

These kind of shots were really satisfying to me because I had no idea what I'd end up with before taking them. It was a case of feeling my way and just trying to observe everything going on around me, not just what was happening in the pool.
I'm really happy that they seem to communicate what I hoped they would - sometimes I think its difficult to be objective about a particular moment when I was there and know the context surrounding it.

I'm kind of glad that #4 and #7 are among the favourites, as these were both very deliberate shots.

#4 involved a bit of luck as I didn't actually mean to go down as low as 1/30th second and I only took 2 frames - so was lucky to nail one of them. But I knew the Australian men's team all jumped in the pool together at the start of the game, so I had time to set up and prepare for the shot before taking it. I tried a few other experiments with the men's team jumping in at the start of other games too.. I might post another one later.
#7 was a planned shot. The teams always shake hands at the end of each game and I had taken a few other shots of this during the week which I wasn't happy with. I knew the only way I was really going to keep the viewer's attention on the handshake was to get rid of faces from the shot. And I finally got the shot I wanted in the 2nd-last game of the championships.

Uli, I don't mind you asking about my processing at all. I certainly DO process my shots, and make no claims that any of my shots remain as they come out of the camera. There are numerous shots in the past where I've introduced blur to change the emphasis of a shot.
But in this case (and the case of all these shots, including #3), I haven't added any blur. The blur in #7 is exactly as it came from the camera - you don't get much DOF from 135mm f/2 when you are standing fairly close. I did other things to that shot (slight crop, tone curves, channel mixing, and a slight darkening of some elements to emphasize the light on the handshake), but didn't touch any of the detail.
That's also generally true for all the shots I took during this championships. I worked the colours and tones a lot, but generally didn't touch the detail apart from straightforward sharpening and noise-reduction.

I also love #6 for its exaggerated gestures and comical expression. But I had to darken the background a lot here because the seating was very distracting. While this shot was partly good luck of being in the right place at the right time - the fact I was there all week meant that there were numerous occassions like this that presented themselves. I was bound to get at least one of them.

[adam]

Again, very nice photographs!

[wulinka]

Hey Kombi,
I'm glad you mention Noise reduction there!
I had been wondering how you coped at those high ISOs, but then most shots are taken at fast shutterspeed I guess.
Doing more indoors shooting lately I have been finding the level of noise at ISO 400 at around 1/100s pretty unexceptable, now I am trying to go up in ISO and down in exposure to see if that's better.
How was your noise experience for these shots?

uli

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Uli....

I find the best way to deal with noise is simply to stop thinking about it and it will go away! Seriously... I do! :|

Take a photo that looks a bit noisy and print it out at 6x4"... Does the noise still look bad? No way, chances are its magically gone!
Try again at 5x7" Even 8x10" I think you'll find it never looks as bad as it does when viewing an image at 100% crop on the screen.
Now go back and have a look at some old film enlargements and check out the grain. Chances are it will be a lot worse than the noise in your shots... And does this grain detract from the shot? Naaaa.. In fact sometimes it adds character. But because there was nothing you could do about it in film, you simply ignored it.

Having said that, I do try to shoot at the lowest ISO I can, and I do try to avoid 1600 iso whenever I can because it is nasty on a 350D. But the thing I dislike about 1600 isn't so much the noise as the fact its almost impossible to get nice sharp images.
While I do use noise-reduction at 800 ISO and a bit at 400, the effect is often undone by a dose of sharpening at the same time.
But when preparing images for the web, its pretty easy to make even 1600 iso images look pretty clean.
I just resample them down to, say 720x480 using the bicubic algorhythym in photoshop, and this in itself will greatly reduce noise. If there is still some visible then I give the low-res version a quick going-over with noise-ninja - and its rare that any noise survives this process.
But just because the images I post here are fairly clean doesn't mean they look so clean at 100% crops.

And I'd suggest you are better off sticking to the lowest ISO you can, even if it means a slower shutter speed. As far as I know, it is only very long shutter speeds (several seconds) that will start to introduce noise into images as the sensor heats up - anything resembling a normal shutter speed should be fine. But you might find the "expose to the right" technique useful to minimise noise. Here is a good resource that explains the "expose to the right" rule of thumb - but personally I don't use it much because it complicates things and makes it much easier to blow highlights - For most shots I'd rather put up with a bit more noise but feel more secure about my dynamic range. Its a personal choice though - my solution is simply to learn to ignore noise and it magically goes away by itself.

[wulinka]

Can I start a new thread about noise and sharpenss? I think I will, let me just gather my pics.....

[smarti77]

Adrian - All of your shots from this event - action, portrait and these moments - are all amazing. Thank you for posting them all. I found them to be thoughtful and inspiring.